Cocoa Household Income Study Methodology
New methodology for measuring cocoa farmer household income promises to serve as a strong standard for the sector.
More than 90% of cocoa production globally comes from an estimated 5 to 6 million smallholder farmers. Cocoa farmers, mostly living in poor rural areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, face poverty due to limited resources, infrastructure and job opportunities. While cocoa is a vital income source, it has challenges such as low yields and small-sized farms. Low incomes contribute to issues like child labour and deforestation, emphasising the need for efforts to increase farmer incomes.
The cocoa sector has been working to deliver living incomes for cocoa farming households since 2015, but learning at the sector level aimed at achieving living incomes has been hampered by challenges in data collection and sharing. To address these challenges and to inform policy and strategy design and delivery with a focus on impact at scale, a collaborative approach is required. With this goal in mind, and with the intention of harmonising and ensuring the availability of a comprehensive household income evaluation methodology across the cocoa sector, the Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) was developed. This document presents this methodological approach.
Across the entire cocoa sector, there are broad-based efforts underway to help cocoa-farming households achieve a living income. Companies, development organizations, researchers and others are all trying different types of interventions. But how do we know which ones will work the best?
Cocoa household income study methodology
A sector-wide approach to assessing the living income status of households in the cocoa sector
Approche pour les études de revenus des ménages producteurs de cacao
Une approche sectorielle pour évaluer le niveau de revenu vital des ménages dans le secteur du cacao
"This methodology is important as it enables evidence-based policy and intervention design based on the analysis of good quality data for different household groups. We hope that it contributes to greatly reducing or closing the living income gaps of farming households,"
said Yuca Waarts, Senior researcher at Wageningen University & Research.
